by Nicola Ford
He pulled up at the end of the gravel drive, a mass of Victorian brickwork in front of him. Dronfield Place must have been a substantial country house when it had been built in, as the plaque between the upper-storey windows proudly proclaimed, the 1880s. The addition of a sprawling modern extension had increased its capacity but diminished its impact considerably. He could see a few residents seated round tables in front of the extension’s patio doors enjoying the summer sunshine. Why hadn’t they chosen this place for his father? They’d looked at so many he was struggling to remember.
As soon as he entered the reception the reason came back to him. At the desk stood the not inconsiderable figure of Mrs Danks, the care home manager. Twice the girth of David and almost as tall, Mrs Danks was decidedly more drill sergeant than Florence Nightingale. And now he also recalled thinking to himself last time that he wouldn’t have fancied being a resident who disagreed with her. He just hoped she didn’t remember him from his previous visit.
He smiled, grateful that he’d thought to pack his Marks & Spencer blazer for the conference. ‘Hi, I wonder if you can help me. I’m here to see …’ He hesitated, suddenly aware he didn’t know Beth’s father’s first name. ‘Mr Kinsella.’
Mrs Danks hit David with a full-on laser beam of a glare. ‘And you would be?’
‘David. David Barker. I’m a relative of Mr Kinsella’s.’
She didn’t look convinced. ‘I wasn’t aware Mr Kinsella had any surviving relatives, now that his daughter is no longer with us.’
David supposed you must become practised in death-related euphemisms if you worked in a place like this for any length of time.
He said, ‘Our side of the family had kind of lost touch with Beth’s until the funeral. You know how it is. And with Beth gone I just sort of thought someone ought to come and pay Uncle a visit.’
She seemed to have accepted his explanation, because she started searching through a list on the clipboard in front of her. ‘Ah. Here he is: Jeffrey Kinsella, room 27B – that’s ground floor, corridor B, but you’ll probably find him in the day room. I’ll get someone to show you through. If I can just get you to sign in.’
He must have looked nervous. He certainly felt it.
‘It’s just in case of fire.’
She punched in something on the computer keyboard and a few minutes later a harassed-looking young woman, five feet nothing tall, hair drawn neatly back in a ponytail, appeared.
‘Ah, there you are, Nina. Is your pager not working?’
Nina said, ‘I was just seeing to Mrs Dempsey, Mrs Danks.’ The lilting intonation was slight but distinct. She sounded Polish, or maybe Lithuanian – he wasn’t good with accents.
‘Will you show Mr Barker here to Mr Kinsella, please?’
Nina held her hand out towards the double doors. ‘Come with me, please.’
Once they were safely on the other side of the doors, Nina looked up at him and smiled. ‘Don’t mind her.’ She tilted her head back in the direction of reception. ‘She’s not so bad as she sounds. Her bark is more bad than her bite. It’s nice that you’ve come to see Jeffrey. No one visits him now Beth is gone.’
‘You knew Beth, then?’
‘Yes. Beth, she was a good woman. Jeffrey, he is not always easy. It’s often the way, you know, when they have dementia.’
Indeed, he did know. ‘I understand. My father has Alzheimer’s too.’
She nodded. ‘It’s not so surprising. It sometimes runs in families.’ She suddenly seemed to realise what she had said. She touched his arm. ‘Oh, I am sorry.’
‘You don’t have to be. I already knew.’
And in truth he did know. In the small dark hours of the night, when the demons came calling, it was one of the myriad things he lay awake worrying about. The thought terrified him. When he’d first found out he’d even briefly started looking up living wills. But when Jo had stumbled over him looking up Swiss clinics in his office one day he’d decided it was time he pulled himself together. If the fates decreed that he was destined to end up trapped in an increasingly diminishing world like his father, he should at least make the most of his faculties in the meantime.
When they got to the day room there was no sign of Jeffrey Kinsella. But they had more luck when they got to his room. Jeffrey was seated in one corner, staring fixedly out of the open window. He appeared to be listening to the birdsong.
Nina said, ‘Jeffrey, you have a visitor. Your nephew has come to see you.’
David said, ‘Hello, Jeffrey.’
Jeffrey turned towards him. ‘Hello.’
That was a good start; at least he recognised there was someone there. On the rare occasions that he visited his father these days, an hour of total silence ensued as David desperately tried to think of something to say to the husk of the man that had brought him up. He’d learnt to take a book with him, so that he could read to him – The Oxford Book of Romantic Verse. From somewhere long ago David had remembered his mother telling him his father used to read to her from it when they’d first been courting. And just now and then, as David read, there would be a glimmer of recognition. Or on a good day he might take David’s hand and smile.
Then Jeffrey added, ‘I don’t have a nephew.’
David felt an overwhelming wave of guilt rush over him.
But Nina turned to him and said, ‘Don’t worry. He didn’t always remember Beth.’
David was just thinking that given what had happened to her maybe it was a blessing that he didn’t remember her when Jeffrey said, ‘Beth. Where’s Beth?’
Nina said, ‘Beth can’t come today, Jeffrey. Your nephew David is here to see you.’ Then mouthed the words, ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
David said, ‘This is a nice room, Jeffrey.’
Jeffrey didn’t reply.
Glancing over at the table in the opposite corner of the room, he saw a silver picture frame with a photo of Beth in it. David walked over and picked it up.
Jeffrey reached out as if to grab it. ‘Beth! Beth!’
David handed it to him and the old man held it hard to his chest. Oh God! He wished he’d never started this.
‘Jeffrey, do you remember Beth?’
The old man nodded. ‘Beth brings me things.’
It hadn’t even crossed his mind. The least he could have done if he was going to put him through the wringer was bring him a bar of chocolate or a bag of grapes. The truth was until he’d stepped into this room, Jeffrey Kinsella had been a way to find answers to his questions, not a real person. And he’d thought Beth had been obsessively single-minded!
‘What sorts of things, Jeffrey?’
‘All sorts. Nice things.’
More in desperation than in hope, David said, ‘When Beth comes to see you, Jeffrey, does she talk to you about her work?’
‘Beth has to work.’
David nodded. ‘Yes, Beth has to work. Did’ – he corrected himself – ‘does Beth talk about what she does?’
Jeffrey said, ‘Beth digs. She finds things.’
Smiling, David leant forwards. ‘That’s right, Jeffrey, Beth finds things. I find things too, Jeffrey, like Beth does. I dig them up. I work where Beth used to work.’
Jeffrey was smiling at him.
David asked, ‘Does Beth talk to you about where she works, Jeffrey?’
Still clutching the picture frame to his chest, Jeffrey asked, ‘When is Beth coming?’
He should never have done this. What on earth had he been thinking? It was perfectly apparent that he was going to learn the square root of bugger all from Jeffrey Kinsella. All he was doing was causing him more distress. The only thing that salved David’s conscience was that Jeffrey was highly unlikely to remember that David had ever visited him.
David said, ‘Beth can’t come today.’
He stood up, unsure of what to say. Jeffrey Kinsella was staring up at him, his eyes almost pleading. It must be a lonely world he inhabited. As he moved towards the door, David heard movement be
hind him. Turning round, he saw that Jeffrey had abandoned the picture of Beth on his chair and was trying to climb onto a chair below the shelf on the far wall.
David asked, ‘Do you want something, Jeffrey?’
Jeffrey pointed at the shelf.
David said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get it for you.’
The shelf only had three items on it. There was a picture of an older woman bearing a striking resemblance to Beth, whom David guessed must have been her mother. Next to it was a small carriage clock of the silver wedding gift variety and at the far end was a padded brown A5 envelope. David reached up towards the picture of Jeffrey’s wife, but the old man shook his head determinedly and instead pointed to the end of the shelf where the envelope lay.
David tried to hand it to Jeffrey, but he immediately pushed it away.
When David went to replace it on the shelf, the old man shook his head. ‘No, no, no, no. From Beth.’
David tried to hand it to him again, but Jeffrey wasn’t having any of it.
David said, ‘You want me to have it.’
Jeffrey smiled at him and immediately returned to his seat, his gaze firmly fixed on the window. David might as well not have been in the room.
On the outside of the envelope someone had scrawled the word ‘Bailsgrove’ in thick black marker pen. David opened it to see a clear plastic finds bag containing a single small red USB stick.
David drew in a long, slow lungful of Derbyshire air. He needed this. After his trip to see Jeffrey Kinsella his head had felt like mashed potato. His mind kept replaying images of Jeffrey and his own father, each trapped in their own small and ever-diminishing worlds. He knew the moorland around Gardom’s Edge like the back of his hand. As a teenager growing up in Chesterfield he used to catch the bus out to Baslow and walk up here. While his brothers were off playing cricket or chasing their latest conquest, David was picking his way between the birch trees and the tumbled Bronze Age field walls trying to imagine what life had been like for the men and women who’d lived here then. Wiltshire might be where his heart was these days but if he had a soul this was where you’d find it.
He picked his way along the top of the gargantuan curving remains of the stone bank that the adult David now knew had been built by the first farmers almost sixty centuries before he’d set foot here. Sally’s phone call had panicked him. First Beth Kinsella, then Jack Tyler. How could that be a coincidence? But he needed to think straight. He didn’t know how he’d survived the last few months. Had he believed in a deity, he’d have given it credit for preventing him from throttling the Runt. He’d been revelling in the imminent demise of the Hart Unit. David knew that the teaching commitments the Runt had piled on him this term had been Muir’s less than subtle strategy to ensure saving the unit was as difficult as possible.
And, as a consequence, David had been forced to leave that particular responsibility entirely in Clare and Jo’s hands. And capable though they were, he couldn’t help feeling he’d let them down. He’d been the one accusing Clare and Jo of being irresponsible when the press had muscled their way onto site. But where had he been when they needed him? And now he’d let Sally down too. Well, David Barbrook, it was about time you stopped feeling sorry for yourself and started taking your responsibilities seriously.
It had taken him forty minutes to get to the top, but it took him less than twenty to scramble back down to the pub car park where he’d left the Land Rover. Grabbing his laptop bag, he shoved the envelope into the side and headed into the bar. He ordered a pint, tucked himself into a quiet corner and fired up the laptop.
Slipping the USB stick from its plastic bag, he plugged it into the laptop. There was only one folder on it, which in turn contained a single file. A video file labelled ‘Bailsgrove20150413’. He double-clicked on the file. The video seemed to take an eternity to load.
When it eventually did it showed an image of two men. It must have been either last thing in the evening or early morning because the light wasn’t great. But David could clearly see they were standing in front of the Portakabin on the dig site. And just as obviously the figure standing facing the camera was Paul Marshall. He was holding something out in front of him, waving it in the direction of the second, thinner man. It looked like a package of some kind. The sound quality was atrocious and David could only make out a couple of Marshall’s words – ‘problem’ and ‘last chance’. The second man seemed to be arguing, shaking his head. But David couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then Marshall ripped open the package and withdrew its contents. It looked like a wad of twenty-pound notes. Marshall rippled his thumb through them, then shoved them back into what remained of the packaging. The second man started to walk away and Marshall grabbed him by the arm. Marshall swung him round and thrust the package into the pocket of the second man’s denim jacket. The second man looked up towards Marshall and started to protest. David could see who it was now. It was Neil Fuller.
Standing in front of the cracked and peeling front door of 46 Compton Street, Clare hesitated. Next to her, the tiny weed-choked front garden was overlooked by a substantial bay window, its curtains half-drawn even at this hour. Neil and Sadie obviously weren’t gardeners, but then they probably had other things on their mind at the moment.
Now that she was actually here, she was less than entirely sure exactly what she’d thought she was going to achieve by coming here. Even if Neil was here. But what harm could it do? At worst Sadie would be hacked off that his boss had come calling. At best … Well, she didn’t know what her best scenario was, but she did know she was worried about Neil.
She knocked. But there was no reply. She tried a second time. Still no response. At least she wasn’t waking the baby up. If she didn’t get a reply this time she’d go. Maybe Neil was upstairs or out the back. She rapped on the knocker harder this time, and as she was about to turn and walk away the door swung open of its own accord. It had been open all along.
She stood in the doorway, taking in the scene in front of her. The hallway was uncarpeted, the cracked Minton tiles splattered with several generations of paint. Above her a bare light bulb was swinging in its light fitting.
She pushed the front door to behind her and called out, ‘Hello. Is anyone in?’
There was no reply. Maybe he was out back. She walked through towards the back of the house and into the kitchen. It was unremittingly grim. There were steel bars across the only window. And there was no need to open the back door. She could see through the window that it would have been near impossible for anyone to wade through the thicket of nettles that consumed the garden. Much like the teetering stacks of unwashed plates and half-crushed beer cans that were threatening to consume the kitchen.
There was no sign of baby paraphernalia and precious little sign that anyone other than a single male inhabited the place. Had Sadie finally left him and taken the baby with her? That would explain how low he’d been the last few weeks. And from what she could see he must be in a considerably worse state than either she or Jo had imagined. It would also explain why he hadn’t minded spending hours in A & E with Val on Saturday night.
But where was he? Clare really was worried now. What sort of state of mind must he be in to just walk out and leave the front door wide open? And, most importantly, what could she do about it?
Despite having spent the best part of the last two months working with him, she had no conception of what he did with himself when he wasn’t – as she’d assumed at least – at home with Sadie and the baby. It suddenly struck her that other than the discussions they’d had about Beth and the Celtic world there had been precious little substance to their conversations. The whole of the rest of what she knew of him was based on Crabby’s insights and the somewhat one-sided opinions of Stuart Craig.
She made her way back into the hallway. Should she go and look for him? The trouble was she didn’t have the first clue where to find him. Crabby had said he’d had problems with drugs and booze when he was younger. She was rel
ieved at least to see that so far the only signs of alcohol were the empty cans of Sainsbury’s Basics bitter, and you were more likely to drown yourself than get drunk on those.
But what if he’d gone out to try to score some drugs? ‘Score some drugs.’ Listen to yourself, Clare! She didn’t have the first clue about what that really even meant. The sum total of her knowledge of drugs came from one puff on a ‘herbal’ cigarette in her first year, which had resulted in her feeling decidedly queasy. She was distinctly underqualified for stalking the streets of Gloucester in search of likely dealers’ haunts.
There wasn’t much point hanging around here, though. And he wasn’t answering his phone so there was no point sending him a text message. But she could try leaving him a note.
She pushed open the lounge door. There must be something in here that she could write on. The scene was shrouded in a strange half-light. She walked to the bay window and drew back the curtains, narrowly avoiding tripping over a stack of books as she did so. The sunlight flooded in to reveal a room that retained the bones of its Victorian origins; high-ceilinged and still with its picture rail intact. But a cursory coat of white emulsion had failed to disguise the bold brown and orange swirls that chronicled the tastes of long-forgotten residents.
Clare’s eye was drawn to the heavy black marble-effect overmantle that dominated the room. In the middle of it, set between two brass candlesticks, someone had taped an A4-sized colour photograph that appeared to have been torn from a book. The dog-eared photo was badly faded, but Clare could still make out the image. It showed the head and torso of a middle-aged man. His torso appeared to have been hacked away from his lower body and his skin was a decidedly unnatural chestnut hue, looking more like well-worn leather than the skin of even the most enthusiastic self-tanning aficionado. On closer examination the viewer could see that the subject of the photo was sporting a moustache and Clare could clearly make out five o’clock shadow around his chin. And just to one side, poking out from under that chin, was the end of a length of sinew, the garrotte that had helped to hasten his death. But what made the image truly extraordinary was that Clare knew that the man in the photo had been laid to rest the best part of two thousand years ago. It was Lindow Man.